Stress

Lately I’ve been extremely stressed out. I am, as of this week, 34 weeks pregnant with my second child. The pregnancy is going fine – except quite a bit of heartburn and the need to do as many pelvic rocks as possible to ensure that the baby turns to be anterior by the time I go into labor (the baby is currently mostly posterior, which is a big cause of back labor – some of which I experienced in my labor with Ezzie, and feel no desire to try it again) – so it’s a huge blessing that all my stress is related to other things. And it’s all small things – the decisions and obligations I have pressing on me are really not very big things – it’s just that I haven’t been handling the crush of small things so well.

I don’t want to go into it here, since Blogger is (unfortunately) a totally public forum, and it seems too personal and rather inappropriate to do so. So this isn’t (and can’t) really be a “venting” post, not really. It’s just a lot of little things that I wish weren’t even issues – or at least, not things I have to (or feel like I have to) deal with.

But Jane Austen – specifically, Ang Lee’s Sense and Sensibility­ – has helped, and this devotion for 8 November in my Oswald Chambers book helped yesterday, too:

“We know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.” Romans 8:26

We realize that we are energized by the Holy Spirit for prayer; we know what it is to pray in the Spirit; but we do not so often realize that the Holy Spirit Himself prays in us prayers which we cannot utter. When we are born again of God and are indwelt by the Spirit of God, He expresses for us the unutterable…

It was extremely consoling to me, because I’ve been feeling so overwhelmed lately that I don’t know what to ask for in the way of help in my prayers, except for peace and direction. Chambers’ meditation on Romans 8:26 showed me that I don’t always need to know what to pray for and that, hallelujah, is a welcome relief.